So asks Newsweek's cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all.

Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill's career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power.

That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book "Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War" seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book "stinks."

Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The Brits kicked away their empire. Through colossal blunders, Britain twice declared war on a Germany that had not attacked her and did not want war with her, fought for 10 bloody years and lost it all.

Unable to face the truth, Hitchens seeks solace in old myths.

We had to stop Prussian militarism in 1914, says Hitchens. "The Kaiser's policy shows that Germany was looking for a chance for war all over the globe."

Nonsense. If the Kaiser were looking for a war he would have found it. But in 1914, he had been in power for 25 years, was deep into middle age but had never fought a war nor seen a battle.

From Waterloo to World War I, Prussia fought three wars, all in one seven-year period, 1864 to 1871. Out of these wars, she acquired two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, and two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine. By 1914, Germany had not fought a war in two generations.

Does that sound like a nation out to conquer the world?

As for the Kaiser's bellicose support for the Boers, his igniting the Agadir crisis in 1905, his building of a great fleet, his seeking of colonies in Africa, he was only aping the British, whose approbation and friendship he desperately sought all his life and was ever denied.

In every crisis the Kaiser blundered into, including his foolish "blank cheque" to Austria after Serb assassins murdered the heir to the Austrian throne, the Kaiser backed down or was trying to back away when war erupted.

Even Churchill, who before 1914 was charging the Kaiser with seeking "the dominion of the world," conceded, "History should ... acquit William II of having plotted and planned the World War."

What of World War II? Surely, it was necessary to declare war to stop Adolf Hitler from conquering the world and conducting the Holocaust.

Yet consider. Before Britain declared war on him, Hitler never demanded return of any lands lost at Versailles to the West. Northern Schleswig had gone to Denmark in 1919, Eupen and Malmedy had gone to Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine to France.

Why did Hitler not demand these lands back? Because he sought an alliance, or at least friendship, with Great Britain and knew any move on France would mean war with Britain -- a war he never wanted.

If Hitler were out to conquer the world, why did he not build a great fleet? Why did he not demand the French fleet when France surrendered? Germany had to give up its High Seas Fleet in 1918.

Why did he build his own Maginot Line, the Western Wall, in the Rhineland, if he meant all along to invade France?

If he wanted war with the West, why did he offer peace after Poland and offer to end the war, again, after Dunkirk?

That Hitler was a rabid anti-Semite is undeniable. "Mein Kampf" is saturated in anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws confirm it. But for the six years before Britain declared war, there was no Holocaust, and for two years after the war began, there was no Holocaust.

Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the Final Solution was on the table.

That conference was not convened until Hitler had been halted in Russia, was at war with America and sensed doom was inevitable. Then the trains began to roll.

And why did Hitler invade Russia? This writer quotes Hitler 10 times as saying that only by knocking out Russia could he convince Britain it could not win and must end the war.

Hitchens mocks this view, invoking the Hitler-madman theory.

"Could we have a better definition of derangement and megalomania than the case of a dictator who overrules his own generals and invades Russia in wintertime ... ?"

Christopher, Hitler invaded Russia on June 22.

The Holocaust was not a cause of the war, but a consequence of the war. No war, no Holocaust.

Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did not save Poland. She did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose victims outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September 1939, and who joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all of Poland, and all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe.

The British Empire fought, bled and died, and made Eastern and Central Europe safe for Stalinism. No wonder Winston Churchill was so melancholy in old age. No wonder Christopher rails against the book. As T.S. Eliot observed, "Mankind cannot bear much reality."

That Hitler was a rabid anti-Semite is undeniable. "Mein Kampf" is saturated in anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws confirm it. But for the six years before Britain declared war, there was no Holocaust, and for two years after the war began, there was no Holocaust.

I personally do believe that the two great World Wars did finish Great Britain off as an empire.

I also believe that occasionally things happen in the world that are a lot more important than maintaining an empire. They were absolutely correct in opposing Hitler's mad quest for continental domination when most countries wanted no part of another war.

"Britain twice declared war on a Germany that had not attacked her and did not want war with her,"

Pat, Pat, Pat when you have told everyone that you want to rule the whole world and make a darn good start at taking over a whole frickin' continent, it's pretty clear to even the densest of observers, that an island nation within swimming distance of that continent is in immediate peril.

The one thing Pat has right is that Hitler secretly admired the British who he regarded as a Germanic people. He was supposedly reluctant to go to war with them. It was the Russians he hated as an inferior race: ‘Slavs’.

I felt better when Pat was over on MSNBC where he pretty much had the same position on Iraq as the lesbian cow Rachel Maddow. I saw Pat on Hannity and Colmes the other night as evidently he has started appear on Fox. Hannity was slobbering all over Pat in such a way, that for a moment I thought Julie Annie had returned from the anonymity of the Republican Party Witness Protection Program.

I also believe that occasionally things happen in the world that are a lot more important than maintaining an empire. They were absolutely correct in opposing Hitler's mad quest for continental domination when most countries wanted no part of another war.

I hope we learn enough from history to be able to defeat islam, and not lose our own country or its place in the world.

But ya know what? All countries eventually die. We've lived a worthy life, if we must die, better to die a worthy death.

Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the Final Solution was on the table.

In September 1935, on the occasion of the passing of the first of the Nuremberg laws, Hitler gave a speech.

In the speech he said that if Germany's "Jewish problem" could not be solved by these new laws, then the matter needed to be delegated to the Nazi Party itself so that the Party could engineer an "Endloesung" - a final solution.

The Final Solution was thus publicly on the table almost seven years before the Wannsee Conference.

31
posted on 06/20/2008 8:28:26 AM PDT
by wideawake
(Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)

Pat rewrites history again. Britain didnt lose her empire because of the world war

It was certainly a driving factor. Britain was devastated and the population wanted nothing to do with foreign adventures. They lost India and then had no reason to bear the expense of maintaining standing armies in Palestine and Egypt to defend the road to India through the Suez canal. They pulled out, Israel was born.The idea that there wouldn't have been a Holocaust is ridiculous though. Hitler's justification for war was lebensraum. He wanted space for a Greater Germany. It always included genocide as a method to that end.

“Pat rewrites history again. Britain didnt lose her empire because of the world war.”

Well, actually, she did. Britain went bankrupt during WW II... they spent the entire treasury on the war effort, including lend-lease. You simply can’t hold an empire together when you can’t even protect your capital from getting bombed.

But.... the war simply hastened an inevitable process, I think. Even if WW II had never happened, Britain’s territories were already moving for independence. Before Hitler became a threat, Churchill was most famous for ranting about the threat of India breaking away from the Empire in Parliament.

WW 1 made the end of the Empire inevitable, because that’s the war that spawned all the major national independence movements. Even without WW II, the British Empire, at best, would have slowly died away. WW II just accelerated the process.

Pat is being used by the MSM to keep Jews on the Democratic plantation.

I am a staunch conservative, but the fact that this Nazi sympathiser had ANY position in ANY Republican administration and managed to win a few primaries gives me pause about some of my fellow conservative travelers.

I get over it, knowing Pat represents an odd fringe element, but ONLY because I am well informed.

To the average TV-watching news person, this guy makes Republicans look like Nazis.

We need to speak out AGAINST him being the token “conservative” in ANY broadcast.

Pick up Max Hastings' new book, "Retribution, the Battle for Japan, 1944-45." The book is a survey of all the Asian battlefields at the close of WW II. Hastings is a historian who concludes Britain couldn't hold India, Burma, etc even if the war had not happened.Hastings is a Brit, by the way.

You folks might be interested in chiming in. Who knew that British foreign policy was responsible for the Holocaust? Who knew that Hitler DIDN’T really mention the final solution in 1935 as I had been taught years ago! Pat has ENLIGHTENED ME! ;-)

Just another failed politician carving out a niche for himself. Al Gore’s got environmentalism. Pat’s got pro-Nazi historical revisionism. Hey, even Pat’s got bills to pay. Might as well do something you love!

Hitler knew the history of Napolean in Russia and accordingly planned his invasion for an earlier kickoff but got bogged down trying to bail out his hopeles Italian ally. He probably convinced himself that with a mechanized army the results would be different.

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